Trump wants mapmakers to switch to “Lake America.” MapQuest has said no.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
MapQuest, the self-proclaimed “OG of online mapping,” says it’s sticking with “Lake Ontario.”
Its usage has skyrocketed 50x, the company tells BI.
It all started as a “joke about being so old we don’t know how to update our maps.”
It’s 2026, and all things late ’90s and early 2000s are cool again. Including, apparently, MapQuest.
The self-proclaimed “OG of online mapping” has shot up to the fourth-most-downloaded free program on Apple’s App Store in the US. It’s the most-downloaded Apple app in Canada and the 21st most popular free app on Google Play Store, according to AppFigures.
MapQuest’s renaissance comes after the free online mapping service wrote several posts saying it will continue to label the easternmost Great Lake as “Lake Ontario.” The move rejects the Trump Administration’s Thursday executive order that “immediately” renamed the body of water between New York and Ontario “Lake America” in the federal government’s official database of place names.
We are aware that Lake Ontario is being correctly labeled on our map.
That could change, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News on Monday. Trump “has reached out to Apple directly,” he said, adding that we could see app updates “coming soon.”
MapQuest, which started in 1996, became popular before smartphones became widespread. American families could ask the computer-based service for turn-by-turn directions to a destination hours away and then print them before hitting the road. AOL scooped up the service in 2000 for $1.1 billion.
It quickly became obsolete as GPS-enabled phones rose in popularity, giving drivers on-the-spot directions, even if they took a wrong turn. Google Maps surpassed MapQuest in popularity by 2008.
The old platform told Business Insider it initially decided to keep the Gulf of Mexico’s name “as a joke about being so old we don’t know how to update our maps.”
Now, MapQuest says it’s seen a 50x surge in usage — and won’t switch either body of water’s name.
“People spoke with their downloads,” Doug Berger, the general manager of MapQuest, said. “They want a mapping app with names they’re familiar with.”
Google Maps, meanwhile, is the 19th most popular Apple app in America, 14 slots behind MapQuest.
Instagram will now force AI accounts to use an “AI-generated profile” label.
Meta
Instagram is pushing AI creator accounts to put an “AI-generated profile” label on their profile.
If they don’t do it, Instagram will tank their reach.
This doesn’t mean you can’t make an AI creator army (please don’t) — you just have to label the profiles if you want reach.
Instagram wants people AI creators to start being more transparent about, uh, being AI — and will start cracking down on accounts that look like real people but are actually AI. Sort of.
There’s already an “AI Creator” label that accounts can select for their profile. But that was an option, an opt-in type of thing.
Now, Instagram is telling AI creators that if they don’t put on that label, their content won’t get recommended into the algorithm.
Basically, Instagram is telling these AI-generated accounts: fess up to being AI, or we’ll tank your reach.
They’re also tweaking the label from “AI Creator” to “AI-generated profile,” which is more accurate and less easily confused with a real human who posts about the topic of AI.
That’s probably a good thing for (real) users on Instagram.
“As generative AI becomes a bigger part of how people create, we’ve heard that people don’t like seeing a profile that seems human, only to find out later that the person featured is AI-generated,” Instagram’s blog post on the announcement says. Reasonable!
The kind of AI creators that this is targeting are accounts that look like real people — often beautiful women — and post the kind of photos or videos that lifestyle influencers might do. The classic example of this is Lil Miquela, a computer-generated influencer that predates the AI boom. But now that there are so many AI tools to easily create super-realistic women, there’s a new cottage industry.
What’s the point of these AI creators? I’m not totally sure, but I can imagine a world where creating an AI account on Instagram that looks like a hot babe could be lucrative, either through traditional influencer work like brand endorsements or by other means.
The fact that hot babes seem to be the most common type of AI-generated profile — at least as far as I’ve observed — is probably a little bit complicated. You could imagine the frustration of a real human who thinks they’re complimenting a woman’s photos when it turns out she’s just AI (embarrassing!).
Meta says it will now proactively find suspected AI-generated profiles masquerading as human and flag their accounts. Their posts won’t appear in recommendations until they add that tag.
In a world where AI slop is everywhere, from our sexy fruit melodramas to our deli menus, it’s nice at least to have a wee bit more transparency!
What do you think about Instagram’s push for AI profiles to be clearly labeled as such? Let us know in the comments below:
The author signed up for a meal service twice a week.
Courtesy of the author
Deciding what to cook every night was one of the most exhausting parts of my week.
I started ordering meal kits for just two dinners a week.
Having fewer meals to plan has significantly reduced my mental load.
There are a few questions in my household that irritate me more than “What’s for dinner?”
I think it’s the casual assumption that I have created a meal plan for the week, done all the food shopping and prep, and gotten dinner on the table at exactly the time everyone wants it, all while trying to accommodate my kids’ likes and dislikes. Not to mention the cleanup after.
We are a family of four, and just the idea of “What’s for dinner?” can be exhausting. Every parent deals with this every night, but that doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the butt, even when my husband helps out.
I tried a meal subscription plan
This past spring, I was at peak meal-planning-overwhelm, when I remembered I’d gotten a card in the mail offering a discount if I signed up for a particular meal delivery subscription — one that we had used in the past right after my second kid was born — but hadn’t tried in years. “Their food was pretty good,” I mused to myself. The wheels started turning, and the next thing I knew, I had signed the family up for two meals a week.
The impact was immediate and incredible — for me, at least. Just having those two nights a week covered for dinner made such a huge difference in my mental load.
Deciding what to eat is what bothered me the most
Grocery shopping was not my main inconvenience; it was deciding what to have for dinner each night, and then all the prep work. It felt like I was wasting so much mental energy on what we should have, did we have that too recently to have it again this week, does one child hate it so much that she won’t eat it even though the other child loves it, and so on.
I could do more than two days a week, but then the service starts getting pricey for our budget.
Another thing I love is that meal delivery lets me try recipes I wouldn’t usually make. If a recipe calls for spices or sauces I don’t typically have in my kitchen, I find I’m less inclined to make it. But when every ingredient is sent to me in the exact amount needed, I’m all in.
The author is more willing to try new things because of her meal service.
Courtesy of the author
I am not a gourmet chef. I do not toil over recipes of my own invention until I’ve perfected them. But I do know how to follow a recipe and cook the basics, and the meal delivery services I’ve tried make it even easier. Each recipe gives you step-by-step instructions and the exact amount of every ingredient. And if you can’t stand cooking, some services offer pre-made meals that just need to be heated up.
These days, I am no longer irritated when someone asks, “What’s for dinner?” I simply say, “Chicken burrito bowls,” or “Pork stir fry with lettuce cups,” and go on my merry way.
Do both kids love every meal every time? Absolutely not. But the subscription has lots of options every week, so I can easily find meals that work for everyone most of the time. Then I find it much less daunting to have a meal plan for the remaining nights of the week. And that to me is worth its weight in gold.
Meta wants to change the public’s perception of its smart glasses.
picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Meta’s smart glasses have a PR problem.
So the company is trying to calm consumer nerves with a new PR campaign and privacy settings.
Some event organizers and venues, meanwhile, are restricting Meta’s glasses.
The small camera installed in Meta’s AI smart glasses has become a problem for the company and the public.
Photos and videos captured by Meta glasses have proliferated on social media, and not all of them are consensual. Clips of content creators harassing women and recording their reactions covertly have become a trend, raising concerns about privacy.
“Are you a secret code?” one male content creator asked a woman in an Instagram video. “Because I’m trying to crack you.” Some social media users have dubbed Meta’s product “pervert glasses.”
It’s all a bad look for Meta. So the company is making moves to get ahead of the negativity. It has recently publicized new privacy settings for its glasses and has launched a PR blitz to explain them.
Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth posted an Instagram video on Friday, for example, in which he explained how the smart glasses’ hands-free camera works.
“We designed this camera to be noticed by the people around you, so in every pair of glasses we make, there’s a capture LED on the front, and it lights up when someone’s taking photos or videos for the gallery,” Bosworth said.
Bosworth said the camera has no off switch. It stops working if people try to cover or deactivate it.
“We took this issue all the way across Meta, and we’ve been taking down content and even whole accounts connected to people misusing the glasses,” Bosworth said.
Alex Himel, the vice president of wearables at Meta, also attempted to calm nerves on Friday in a Threads post. He said Meta’s smart glasses will not allow users to record if the camera’s LED light is blocked before or during recording.
“We’re going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone’s gallery,” Himel said.
While the company has suspended accounts that use the cameras to harass people, Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos reported last week that it hasn’t been able to catch them all.
Meta has taken strides to make their smart glasses a must-have accessory. The company has partnered with megastars like Kylie Jenner and Teyana Taylor, and it produced a star-studded Super Bowl LX ad to drum up hype.
As AI smart glasses become increasingly accessible, some event and venue organizers are taking a cautious approach with guests. Burning Man told attendees at the 2026 festival, which starts Monday, that they can bring smart glasses, but must get consent before filming anyone. New York City nightclub Basement updated its no-photo-and-video policy to include smart eyewear.
“Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned,” the venue said in an Instagram post on Friday.
Organizers for the DEFCON Hacking Conference told attendees in July that smart glasses and similar items are prohibited.
In his Instagram video, Bosworth urged users to watch for the LED light that indicates the cameras are recording.
“Please remember,” he added, “the light is there for everyone.”
Google Maps said it changed the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” after the US Geographic Names Information System, the federal government’s official database of place names, did the same.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Google Maps now shows “Lake America” to US users after Trump ordered the name change.
Canadian users will still see “Lake Ontario,” while others will see both names.
MapQuest went viral for refusing to change the name, while Apple Maps still says “Lake Ontario.”
Google Maps has made the switch — for Americans, at least.
A search on the mapping app on Sunday shows the name “Lake America” for the body of water adjoining northern New York and southern Ontario, known until very recently — and still to most — as Lake Ontario.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that he said would “immediately” rename the body of water to “Lake America.” Canadian officials have said they will not recognize the new name.
In a blog post, Google said it changed the lake’s name after the US Geographic Names Information System, the federal government’s official database of place names, did the same.
“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,'” the company said.
Canadian users will still see “Lake Ontario,” according to Google. Viewers in the rest of the world will see both names.
As of Sunday, Apple Maps still says “Lake Ontario.” The company did not respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.
Trump made the switch in retaliation after trade talks between the longtime allies broke down last week. The Trump administration imposed an additional 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods on August 22. Canada then responded in kind. Trump is now threatening 50% tariffs on auto and steel imports from Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that those tariffs would be “devastating on the US.”
“A tariff on Canada is nothing more than a tax on the American people,” he said.
Many Google Maps users wondered if the company would follow Trump’s lead after the president announced the change. MapQuest, the originalonline mapping service that Google obliterated despite having a near 10-year head start, briefly returned to prominence last week by refusing to change the name of the Great Lake.
“We’re not changing it,” the company said in one post. In another, the company invited users to name the lake “whatever you want.”
The stalwart “we’re not changing it” post has more than 5 million views on X. None of the account’s 24 posts in July got more than two likes.
Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister who bowed out of trade negotiations after he said the United States introduced “unfair” last-minute changes, wrote in a post on X that “naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario.”
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” Carney said.
Trump also renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” shortly after returning to office, part of an effort to restore what he called names that honor “American greatness.”
It’s been nice to save money and bond more with my family during this stage of life.
This arrangement lasted longer than expected, and moving out feels like it’s going to be tough.
The day after Thanksgiving, I learned I’d have to move out of my beloved century-old, two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City.
My building had been taken over by a management company in another state.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the beginning of a Hallmark movie in which the protagonist unites with her neighbors to successfully push back against a corporate takeover (all while finding love along the way).
Instead, I found myself panicking about my next move while grieving the comfortable life I’d been so proud to have built over the seven years I’d rented that space.
A few weeks later, my parents suggested that my cat and I move back into my childhood home in the suburbs nearby. As much as living with mom and dad in my 30s felt like it could be embarrassing or a huge step back, it felt like the best choice. So, I did.
I planned to stay for just a few months, but it’s now been four years — and leaving feels more difficult than I ever anticipated.
Financially, this setup has been a blessing
Living with my parents has been going pretty well.
Meredith Schneider
My parents live in a home that they have been paying a mortgage on for nearly 30 years. It’s much cheaper than anything on the rental market, and my financial contributions aren’t even close to what I’d be paying if I lived elsewhere.
It’s also been freeing not to chase roommates down for their share of the rent. I’ve cut back on my expenses even more by no longer paying for WiFi or electric bills, and doing laundry at home instead of a laundromat.
My parents have always purchased enough food for a full household, even when they were empty nesters. This means food is rarely in short supply, and my grocery bill is less, too.
Luckily, they also stock up on some great snacks and subscribe to a weekly May through October Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box full of organic produce that I cannot get enough of.
To further contribute to the household, I like to offer support through physical labor and chores. Personally, I love to cook, bake, and run errands for the family. I also run errands for my grandmother, who lives close by, which helps me check in with her more regularly.
Our dynamic has shifted, and I’m enjoying getting to enjoy my parents in a new way
I’ve experienced a lot of life now that I’m in my 30s, which has helped my parents trust me to be independent.
Meredith Schneider
Living with my parents in my 30s is very different from when I was a kid or even a teenager.
I had been away for a number of years, living in other cities and on my own, and that independence has earned me more of my parents’ trust.
They now realize I am too old for rules — for the most part. In time, they have backed down on strict curfews and specific chore guidelines. We’ve also been able to have important conversations around expectations.
I’ve made it clear that respecting this household and keeping my parents informed about my plans is still important to me, but that it might look different now that I’m older.
For example, when I first moved back, my dad was constantly checking in on me. It was difficult to deal with, especially because I’m a freelance creative with a varied social life and shifting schedule.
Still, I can understand a father worrying about their kid. A brief chat about my age and level of responsibility helped us find common ground and build trust around checking in as needed.
Sharing a space with my parents as an adult has also helped me see them as they are now, from a perspective that is so different and less selfish than the one I had in my adolescence.
I have gotten to work alongside them and admire the career people they are firsthand. I enjoy their respective skills and hobbies, and even the lively debates we stir up while watching a new TV show.
I didn’t plan to stay long, but now I worry about how difficult leaving will be
My parents have been pretty great roommates.
Meredith Schneider
Moving back home wasn’t such a step backward after all. I have been able to jump into the gig economy full force, contribute regularly to the household, and spend time with family.
My “few months” at home with my parents has turned into four years.
Although I have plenty of savings that would allow me to move out and live comfortably, I’ve taken my time finding a stable living situation that makes sense for me.
However, leaving home and all its comforts will be a lot harder than I thought this time around.
Still, no matter where I end up, I’ll continue to connect with my parents, whether taking my mom to concerts or trying new burger spots with my dad. I will also still offer to pick up sticks from the river birches in their backyard that I made them promise not to get rid of.
Everyone’s timeline is unique and circumstances are different. I feel lucky — not embarrassed — I’ve got family to fall back on. And my parents will (most likely) always be my favorite roommates.